The nightmares were predictable, mostly just Connie with great-grandma's scissors. Stalking towards me and calling me a monster, killing everyone in the house one by one, getting arrested and dragged away for execution by one of my old case workers. There were a few that made less sense, like the one where she was watching me from a tree outside the window and yelling that I stole her life or the part where I was trying to stop her from going into a secret door in what looked like a shed or basement or something.

When I woke up I felt fine, despite the nightmares. So an alternate timeline version of myself sometimes attacked people and then reversed time so it hadn't happened? There was literally no harm done. It was a stress relief thing, clearly. Although the admittedly fucked-up nature of the stress relief made me think of mom, which is probably why the scissors had been in the dream. It was partly that she probably would have expected me to kill people, and partly that she had her own inappropriate form of stress relief, which she sometimes called "hide and seek" when I was little. There wasn't a lot of seeking involved.

The first time we played our little game was on my sixth birthday. She took me to the woods, and I was scared because mom was crying but I thought there was at least a chance she was crying out of happiness - hadn't she been crying while she laughed and smiled and hugged me and told me she would never let me go again? Hadn't that been right there in those same woods? She told me to go and find a blue flower, and not come back until I had one. She said she'd wait right there.

And then when I walked away she ran back to the car and drove off.

We played the game at the mall, at the grocery store, at the park. At first I would wait for her, and she would sometimes come back crying and drive me home again but it wasn't like that first time where she was happy to see me. She just looked more sad than ever. Sometimes she wouldn't come back at all, and eventually a police officer would collect me.

I went to my first foster home because of that game, but when I was dropped off with my garbage bag of clothes I had this idea that I should pretend to be a normal happy kid and I overdid it. I was all smiles and calling them mom and dad right away and it freaked them out, setting the tone for my time there. It didn't matter, I wasn't at that house too long. The state of New Jersey sent me back home and my mom was better, for a while. Or she pretended to be better. I decided later that playing that game was a sort of emergency stress relief valve for her, which is why after forcing herself to not abandon me for months she finally snapped. In retrospect, it was a lot like what Connie had done.

I was eight, still much too small to fight back. She pinned me against a wall while ranting and raving, waving around the antique pair of scissors that had belonged to my great grandmother. They weren't pretty or valuable but it was the only thing that we had left of my mom's family so it normally had a place of honor on the wall in my mom's room along with some old plates and photographs of me when I was little. The scissors had always worried me because my mom slammed her door sometimes and I was convinced that sooner or later they would fall from their spot and stab right down into her head.

"You're a monster," she said as she raised the open blades of the scissors to my neck, "and I should slit your throat right now. I shouldn't have to put up with this! I shouldn't have to look at you, every day! Every day that... that face! It's not fair!"

She pressed the scissors into my skin as she spoke, harder and harder. The blood running down and staining my shirt was hot, but I felt suddenly cold as I sensed the yawning abyss of death looming before me. Then the phone rang.

She stepped back and stared at the phone which had only rang the once, then looked down at the scissors in her hand and at my bleeding throat and just shook her head. She picked up the phone to confirm there was nobody there, then walked across the living room to her bedroom where she carefully hung the scissors back in their spot where they could hang over my head like a warning if I dared to enter. For good measure she made eye contact with me and said, again, "Don't come in to my room. Ever." and slammed the door. In that moment, I was mainly just worried that the scissors would fall on her.

The cut got infected, or I had an allergic reaction, or something. God knows what might have been on those old rust-spotted blades. That meant that even though I cleaned it up myself and threw away the bloody shirt someone eventually noticed and despite - or possibly because of - my fantastical story about tripping while running in the kitchen and knocking down the knife block as I fell, I ended up in foster care again.

That was the only time she attacked me, and the two times she abandoned me after that she didn't try and pretend she was forgetting me. When she dropped me off at the Long Haul Hotel she let me know what she was doing and halfheartedly told me to be good for my uncle Roy. When we went on that big exciting road trip to Arizona - the happiest I'd seen my mom since I was little - she explained the whole thing to me over lunch before we reached Phoenix.

The next day Connie seemed normal enough, and we spent most of our visit trying to get me to cast a spell. It didn't go great. Connie could do it, somewhat, though she had focused on written runes so it wasn't her strong suit. "The rune stuff is better anyway, assuming you have prep time. Both ways are better than wild magic I guess, but being able to write shit out like a program means you can get way more specific. It's actually a lot like XCog+ in terms of the syntax, although you have to have Comprehension if you want to be able to make full use of the runes since there's some that look identical but have different meanings."

I felt a headache forming. "Wait. But if it's a written rune, how can two identical ones mean different things? Also what's XCog+?"

"Oh shit! Katrin, I just remembered your book has rune thingies inside the cover! I never got to look at those after I got my Dumine because the guys that stabbed you stole it. Can you grab it?" She paused a moment as she mentally backed up, and then turned to me. "XCog+? We learned it, kinda, from that programming book? I forget where, might have been at one of the desks at Universal Servicing Systems. How do I remember that if you don't? Anyway, the other thing - it's like... I can write an uppercase 'i' and a lowercase 'l' in a way that they look the same, right? But I know which one I meant. Well, magic uses intent and the Common Local Understanding thing we talked about and a bunch of other witchy shit, so it remembers which one is which, but if some random person who didn't write it wants to read it properly and doesn't have Comprehension they're probably fucked."

Katrin returned with her spellbook, and Connie spent fifteen minutes poking at it before there was a sudden loud click and the teeny hexagonal tiles built into the cover popped up slightly. Touching one caused the others to sink back down, and Connie started sort of dragging them around - the others would shift out of the way to make room. "Hah! Yes! This is super fancy, it's practically a touchscreen! I've seen shit like this before, but it was always these big gears built into wands or staves or whatever. Okay check it out. Katrin, I want you to do the light spell, while you're holding the book. Cast it through the book, if that makes sense. And don't do anything special other than that."

Katrin took the book and concentrated, her free hand fluttering around and her lips twitching even though as always she insisted she wasn't saying anything. A tiny white ball of light appeared, but she cursed and let it vanish. A few more times the same thing happened, and then we all gasped as a green light snapped into existence. Connie was cackling, and took the book away to fiddle with the tiles again. Handing it back, Katrin cast again and - first try this time - got a red light.

Connie beamed. "You can set variables. Oooh, what's your shield spell look like?"

Katrin's eyes went wide. "It's a sphere, it appears right in front of my hand. You can change it?"

Stolen story; please report.

"Sure! A sphere is kinda dumb unless it's big enough to cover you or something. Uh. Hang on. Try... now."

Katrin took the book back, and cast again. The shield was almost invisible, but I could just barely see it was flat and square. It was also significantly larger, presumably because it wasn't wasting space being more three-dimensional. After that Errod and I were totally forgotten, but I enjoyed watching Connie teach Katrin as much as she could about the little rune tiles. I got lost quickly, but Katrin seemed to be doing an okay job memorizing them. It seemed like there was a pretty serious limit on its usefulness, as it took Katrin a while to find the right tiles and get them into place - and sometimes she got it wrong and the spell wouldn't cast.

The next morning I had brunch with Errod, Katrin, and Betrad while we waited for Connie to be free to visit - there were more planes than normal aligned so even though Brinkmar wasn't one of them they were testing... something. Top secret shit that probably wouldn't amount to anything. Betrad was supposed to be keeping an eye on us in the meantime, and I'd decided it would be easier if we just invited him to sit at the table.

We were on a balcony at the edge of the river, and the meal was mostly a series of little eggroll-things stuffed with all sorts of different ingredients. It was like a whole meal made out of appetizers. I couldn't figure out how everyone knew which ones were witch, and it mattered because some of them went with certain sauces and others didn't. Three times I got some very unpleasant mixes before I gave up and just tried to mimic whatever Katrin did.

I was worried about Connie, and desperate to find out more about how we were going to find a lost Duminere, and dreading the idea that something would go wrong with the attempt to get into Brinkmar and force us to stay not just the four-and-a-bit months until it was aligned next but until the one after that, which would be a total of more than nine fantasyland months or eleven Earth months. Give or take. If Connie was already unhinged from being trapped and worrying about dying there was no way she'd make it that long. She needed to get out, stretch her legs.

Bert gently blocked my hand as I reached to dip one of the rolls without paying attention, and redirected me to a different sauce. I was a bad judge, but I decided it meant he was still feeling flirty. "What was the security thing the other day? Can you tell us?"

He waved an eggroll around vaguely as he tried to choose his words. "Eh. It was... there was some indication that the protective wards might have been damaged. But they tested everything, and it's all working. They had someone go over the whole thing, in case someone had added something, and they tested everything you can think of. It's all solid. But it was reasonable to be on high alert while they tested it."

We chatted for a little longer, being careful not to mention Earth or the expedition or really anything else interesting around Bert. Finally they took away the empty plates and we stood to leave - and I saw her. She was standing on a rooftop across the river, wearing a plain wooden mask and holding a staff. Her clothes were strange animal skins, and what I could see of her hair was green. She was staring right at me.

"We have to get to the fort," I said, "Something is wrong."

Everyone turned towards me and then immediately swiveled to face where I was looking. I had this one moment where I was completely certain they wouldn't be able to see her, but they sprung into action as if sensing the same menace I did. Bert pulled me to the other side of him and started marching us towards the stairs, Katrin began muttering under her breath as she tried to remember her spells, and Errod drew his sword. He whispered to me as we reached the street, "She's got the same mask as the one that stole my toe. Not the same person, though. You think she came for the rest? Or for parts from you and Katrin?" It was a strange and disturbing thought.

We hurried along the streets until we reached the fort, but pulled up short across the square. There were soldiers gathering, and they weren't from Theramas. I wasn't sure how they'd gotten into the city undetected, but it didn't look like there were nearly enough of them to assault the fortress. The two in the front threw off their cloaks, and I saw that one of them was Telen. The other was shirtless, in contrast to Telen's full plate, and incredibly hairy. I'd seen him somewhere, but I couldn't think of where.

"People of Theramas," Telen said, "stand aside and we will show you mercy. We know that you seek to enter the land of Brinkmar, but that plane is and has always been the property of Halenvar by right of the duties given by the now deceased royal family of Brinkmar, heirs to the Clockwork Empire. King Halenvar has the sole claim to that land, and entering is forbidden. You will not succeed, but unfortunately even the attempt must be punished. Send out the woman you call Calliope Smith, and we will withdraw with no violence. This is your only warning."

Bert grabbed me and tried to haul me away into the nearest building. "Callie, we can't let you be seen."

I tried to push against his arm. "It's not me they want. They want Connie. We need to help her somehow."

"She's in a heavily guarded fortress," he said, calm and with a carefully gentle tone. "She has all the help she needs. We're the ones that are in trouble here." He unclipped a pin from his shirt, in the shape of a shield, and clipped it onto my cloak.

He was right. He was totally right, and if I insisted on charging in again like I had when I'd seen the rug I would just get Katrin and Errod killed. I didn't mind running to save my life, but I hated feeling like I was abandoning Connie. I nodded, and the four of us turned to sneak away. The woman in the mask was standing there.

She swung the staff at us, and the end of it burst into flames - as did my cloak, and a table off to the side in front of a shop. I pulled out my knife and lunged, barely slicing the hand holding the staff. She didn't drop it, and I wasn't even sure I'd hit hard enough for her to feel it in the heat of battle. Bert swung his own sword, and the masked woman gestured at him - knocking him backwards but also throwing her in the opposite direction. She rolled to her feet and swung the staff again, this time with no sign of magic but with a precise strike that clipped the underside of Katrin's jaw and sent her sprawling to the ground.

I threw my knife and was unlucky enough to have it hit hilt-first, but it still seemed to stun her for an instant - I hauled Katrin backwards and pulled my second knife out - I'd managed to find places for four of them before it started to feel silly. Errod yanked off my still-burning cloak as Bert grabbed me again, pulling towards another street. He wasn't even looking at the masked woman anymore, and I saw why as soon as I turned. The soldiers in front of the fort had noticed us.

Katrin was thankfully back on her feet so we ran, but they were already moving to intercept us. The masked woman was blocking the path directly away, and the soldiers were circling around in a pincer that would close on us soon. "Up!" I yelled, and ran up the stairs into a building. Most of the structures in Theramas were only two or three stories, so it only took a moment to get to the roof. I was looking for some route we could take, some clever path that would let us dive into the river and escape or swing from one of the countless strings of colorful flags and get away. There was nothing.

Theramas' soldiers were swarming out of the fort from small doors in the wall, and archers were shooting from above. Telen and the shirtless one were still standing there, in the middle of the square - unconcerned. Arrows slammed down around them but never hit them directly, and they seemed to be having a calm discussion about what to do next. The shirtless one began walking towards the fort and as he did he... changed. He grew, and distorted, and by the time he reached the walls he was an enormous hulking beast. He leapt and clawed his way up the walls despite the storm of arrows slamming into him and sticking in his hide.

Telen began walking towards us down in the square, and as I continued to scan for a way out I saw the masked woman on the closest rooftop. Still staring right at me. No other roof was close enough to possibly jump to and we couldn't go back down; not only were soldiers coming up after us but Betrad had barricaded the door to the stairs as best he could. Telen was coming, though, and he could teleport which meant even if the door held we were fucked. "Sorry. Sorry. Shit, why did I think going up would help?"

Errod put a hand on my shoulder, and I looked over to see him clipping the shield pin onto his own shirt. He'd pulled my cloak off a moment ago, he must have saved the pin before throwing away the burnt garment. "It was worth a shot," he said. "Across the rooftops, right? It could still work. Just... try to get Katrin out."

And before I registered what he'd just said, Errod ran and jumped towards the roof with the woman on it. She was ready for him, but as she swung her staff like a baseball bat to keep him from landing right a flash of blue surrounded him for an instant. The shield pin had triggered. He landed, a bit precarious, and pulled out his sword - swinging it at her head in the same motion. She deflected with her staff, and Errod's blade bit into the wood. With a sudden movement she twisted and pulled and he lost his grip on the weapon, watching impotently as it flew off to the side. The woman's hand glowed green as energy gathered for some kind of attack, and Errod smiled.

She clearly didn't see it coming. Errod just tipped backwards off the roof of the third story building, clutching a dangling bit of her leather shirt in his hand. She jerked abruptly off of the roof after him, screaming as the green light flared and exploded while still in her hand.